Monday motivation: ‘Charlie Mike’ & glittery farts.

“I feel like a majority of my life is me just pretending like I don’t hate everything.” Sad, but true, I told my friend about a month ago.

I’m in a constant search of happiness, and I’ll be searching until I find it. As I mentioned before, I’m still obsessed with listening to podcasts and many of the ones I like are motivational; whether that be blatant or underlying.

I was catching up on The Jillian Michaels’ Show a few weeks ago during a road trip and she was talking about how she’s a control freak, and if something goes wrong that’s out of her control, she’s still going to feel like people are blaming her. She also has issues moving on (sounds familiar…).

She said she started working with a former Navy Seal, and he gets through these types of challenges by “Charlie Mike”. Huh? Charlie Mike. Complete the Mission. Do the best you can do with what you have in order to complete the mission.

You can listen to the entire episode here, but I think that phrase alone is pretty motivational.

It’s sort of weird to talk about motivation, but it’s really the only way for me to get through each day. Some days I feel incredibly READY to just tackle whatever comes. I get this jolt of energy, whether it’s used to go to work and knock out a bunch of tasks, or staying up late to clean my house; those days feel good.

But I’ll tell you this: every Sunday from about 2pm on, I dread the upcoming work week. Like really bad. Then I stay up really late on Sunday to avoid Monday as much as possible. Then on Monday, I’m a slug, and I’ll admit; I sometimes put off starting big tasks because I just don’t feel like it.

I start the countdown to Friday on Monday. Every Thursday night, I think MAN, I’m soooo glad tomorrow is Friday! And Friday at 5:30, I bust out of that office like it’s on fire. And why? Over the weekend, I got to thinking about why I love the weekend so much.

After all, I’m an adult, I can do what I want during the week; it’s not like I’ve got my parents telling me I’ve got to go to bed early. But, I get it, the work day really takes it out of me, and I usually go to dance until at least 8pm, so the weekdays are pretty much planned for me.

As soon as Friday night hits, I can do WHATEVER I want for an entire two days. That could be a cool dinner, a shopping trip, or like this weekend, I did lots of gardening (planted tomatoes and basil), went to a hockey game, and saw a movie. It was fantastic! If I want to, I can do nothing, I can lay in bed and watch homemade Daria marathons and roll around in my sweatpants. Its freedom.

Which brings me to another podcast I listened to last week, “Monocycle” by Leandra Medine at Manrepeller. The episode, “Saturday is a State of Mind“, and she talks a lot about the construct of time. She speaks the truth in that, on Thursdays, we’re so fueled by the IDEA of Saturday approaching, that we power through, and by Friday, “You’re so happy that you’re literally farting glitter.”

Is it the anticipation that we’re craving? Is there a way we can bottle that Saturday feeling and drink it when we’re feeling like shit on a Monday afternoon? Leandra talks about things we can do to help ease the woes of the week, including making Sunday fun instead of moping around, drinking extra delicious coffee on Monday or tackling the big things so the rest of the week is easy.

I don’t know if these things will necessarily work for me, but I’m down to take ideas. I currently take a pretty fun dance class on Monday nights, so that’s a start. But perhaps I should buy special coffee just for Mondays, or plan to always wear a bright color to kick off the week, or take myself to lunch.

One thing that’s inspired me for years is this video that came with a digital John Mayer album I bought many years ago. It was a short, acoustic album, and it featured this video of the making of the son, “In Repair” (which I love). The gist? He goes into the studio in the morning with no song; comes out that night having written the lyrics, song, and even recorded it. This motivates me like I cannot even understand:

I definitely don’t want to live my life just looking forward to two days a week. I want to look forward to every day; even if it’s anticipating something small, like a special dinner or a movie during the week. What about you? Do you do something special to make the weekdays a little more like a Saturday? I’d love to hear it; I need some cool ideas to make my entire week a fun one!

The Squeeze

The Bitter Lemon is home to lifestyle writer, editor, and author, Holly A. Phillips. She’s an obsessive dreamer, TV-addict, and a relentless writer, who’s recently opened an Etsy shop. She currently lives in Austin, Texas with her cat, Blanche Devereaux.